


Chock-O-Crisp for the Teenage Soul

by speck



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game), Life Is Strange 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexuality, Doritos - Freeform, Friendship, Funyuns, Future Fic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Prison, Road Trips, Sean goes to jail, Skittles, snacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-05-15 04:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19287958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speck/pseuds/speck
Summary: “Okay, would you be willing to, um, go down to Beaver Creek and visit Daniel for me this summer?” He says it so fast that it's practically incomprehensible, but there it is. Admittedly, Lyla's a little taken aback by that request.Almost three years after the start of LiS2, Lyla visits Sean. Then, Lyla visits Daniel. If there’s one thing she’s learned in the aftermath of this whole ordeal, it’s that you should always keep some snacks on hand.Or: Imagining what might happen if Sean actually has to go to jail. Now semi-compliant with the Redemption ending.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started this story at the end of episode 3 with a lot of excitement and speculation and critiques. Now that the series is over, I've decided to continue it but make it more compliant with the ending it most resembles. There are still some things I want to change and play with, but I'm tuning it up to fit more with the mood at the end of the series rather than the middle. Hope it's fun anyway!

July 2019

Lyla knows a lot of things about Sean.

Sean is the kind of kid who always tries to make small talk with everyone's mom, even though he's always sucked at small talk. The same kind of kid who managed to convince his baby brother that magnets were a type of animal in middle school. He's the kind of kid who wakes up at 6 AM to go running because he wants to “relax” and who has been known to cry during movies that aren’t even sad. Sean is also the kind of kid who will eat anything lemon-flavored, even though Lyla's pretty sure he actually hates lemon and won't admit it to himself.

The prognosis is, of course, that he's a fucking nerd.

Keeping all that in mind, Lyla sorts her Skittles on the back of an old magazine, studiously avoiding the tabletop. She pushes the yellow pile at Sean with the back of her hand, as usual.

“Thanks, your highness,” he says, popping one into his mouth.

The guys at the metal detector weren’t exactly pleased when Lyla came through loaded down with quarters. But she knows the drill by this point. The first thing you do when visiting your best friend in jail should always be to raid the vending machine with laundry money and the floor change from your car. Makes it feel almost like you’re just hanging out, and it’s a pretty good conversation starter. Sean actually looked kind of excited when he saw the haul artfully arranged for him. It reminds Lyla of the vending machine dinners she sometimes eats at school when she's too busy for the dining hall.

“Can I see the pics of your dorm room now?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” Lyla pulls them up on her phone and hands it over, feeling her forearms peel off the sticky plastic table. Sean drags his fingers around trying to zoom in.

“Dude, your new phone is so stupid. How do I—“

“Let me see it.”

“Oh wait, never mind. I got it,” he says and then immediately scoffs. “Only you would wait until you’ve lived in a place for like eight months to finally finish putting up your posters.”

“What can I say? Mystery is part of my aesthetic. I’m worth waiting for.”

He scrolls through for a minute, kind of vaguely smiling.

“Misty Mice! I’m glad you put that one up. We didn’t get that shit autographed for nothing,” Sean says, being the lovely, observant friend he's always been.

“Obviously. This is why I keep you around, dude.”

“Oh god, what is this picture?” He flips the phone back toward Lyla to reveal the bonus pic of Amanda sleeping on her desk.

“That’s my roommate during finals. Blackmail material for if she ever becomes evil. Check out that massive drool puddle.”

“Gross,” Sean laughs. He returns the phone and grabs a few more Skittles.

“You know,” he says, chewing speculatively. “I think I kind of hate lemon-flavored stuff.” He plunges his other hand into the bag of knock-off cool ranch Doritos.

“Why do you always eat it then?” Lyla asks through a mouthful of cheddar popcorn.

“I don’t know. I don’t eat a lot of candy anymore.”

Neither of them feel the need to mention exactly why that is, but it definitely crosses Lyla’s mind.

“Picky! You have literally been eating all my lemon Skittles since I met you,” she complains. “But I guess you can have a purple one, if you must.”

He scoops up all the purple ones and eats them at once just to spite her.

“No! Sean, you know I love the purple ones. I’m over here trying to be all diplomatic and you had to go and ruin it.”

“I deserve them more than you,” he says. That fact is kind of like sadly indisputable, even though she knows he's joking. She keeps things light because asking him whether he's actually getting enough to eat here would be pretty weird right now.

“Nope, now you owe me big time,” Lyla tells him. "You must forfeit half the fake Doritos.” Affronted, Sean hugs the coveted chips close to his bosom.

Unfortunately, Sean knows Lyla just about as well as she knows him, possibly even better considering how boring her life tends to be. It's fair to assume he still remembers that good gossip will always distract her from candy-related rage.

“Diversion, diversion! Look at this tattoo!” He pulls his sleeve up to reveal a fucking sizable tattoo of a wolf. Lyla’s mouth drops open in shock.

Sean's never sat down with Lyla and actually told her what happened out there. She read about it in the news, of course, and she's seen the evidence in person: the scars on his face, the new way that he carries himself. But all she really has is a collection of snippets she's pieced together into the most important year of her best friend's life. Actually getting to know Sean again distorts the story in her head. He tells her the most basic and simultaneously earth shattering stuff about himself at his own pace. She still gets mad at herself for never anticipating the tiny little details that keep taking her by surprise.

“What the fuck!? Are you kidding me?” she shouts, thoroughly diverted. The little family sitting a few tables over glares at them, so Lyla lowers her volume from actual yell to whisper yell. “How long have you had this?”

"A couple years. I got it on the road.” He snickers at her immediate eye roll.

“Oh, wow, ‘I got it on the road. I’m so deep and edgy,'” Lyla says in her practiced imitation of Sean’s voice. This is the sort of teasing that only recently stopped feeling strained and started feeling funny in a dangerous sort of way. "You think you’re so cool!”

“Actually, I know I am."

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Now let me see!” She bends down to examine the tattoo more closely and resists the urge to grab his wrist. That sort of thing gets you yelled at in jail. Who knew?

The tattoo is messy and weirdly jagged. It's ugly in a carelessly cool sort of way. The sort of way that screams, I burned this stupid picture onto my skin without really even thinking about the repercussions, at top volume. Lyla casually touches the tiny lyrics tattooed behind her ear. She remembers picking them out painstakingly during the months leading up to her eighteenth birthday.

“Two things,” she says, concluding the investigation. "One, as you know, I am outraged that you didn’t show this to me sooner. Two, you didn’t draw this, did you? Because it looks kind of fucking weird.”

“No, it was this girl I met in Oregon. She did it, like, stick and poke."

That sounds . . . intimate. Lyla ragefully shoves a handful of Funyuns into her mouth instead of responding.

“I mean, she kind of sucks at drawing,” Sean continues. “But I think her style is actually pretty cool. She was really into tattoos being this meaningful thing.”

Lyla can hear the reverence in his tone. It sends a pang of weird jealousy through her, which she knows to be stupid and useless but also familiar. This girl is yet another person who knows Sean in a way Lyla never will. She was there when Lyla wasn’t, and she probably never reminded him of home or his dad or school. She was just somebody he met. The girl is clearly gone now. But still. 

It aches a little.

“Well, as much as it would make for the world’s greatest stick-and-poke pun, I’m just gonna avoid asking whether you guys fucked because I think you definitely did.” Lyla says flippantly. She looks up to read Sean’s expression, and it actually seems pretty affirmative. She hates it when her teases are confirmed as unfortunate truths. She raises her eyebrows at him and moves on. “Anyway, do you have any other tattoos or, like, manful scars you’re hiding from the world? I think I deserve to know.”

“‘Manful’? What kind of word is that?”

“I don’t know. I learned it in my lit class or whatever. Just answer the question!"

“Uh, aside from the eye thing, I don’t think so.”

Lyla inwardly cringes for reminding him about the eye thing.

“As we have already established, the eye thing is incredibly bad ass, and I will not hear any other interpretations,” she says, ready to drop the topic. Sean nods affirmatively.

Lyla is actually kind of annoyed that he waited this long to show her the tattoo or tell her that he apparently scored with some badass hottie. But he doesn't need to know that. Lyla knows that knowing Sean means knowing that he doesn’t tell anyone his secrets until he's completely sure he's ready.

Skittles crisis averted, Sean changes the subject. “So what should I do for my one-year adult jail-a-versary? My friend keeps bugging me.”

“Do you mean your nineteenth birthday?” Lyla snorts. “Wait, you have a friend? A friend who isn’t me? I’m so proud of my little Sean.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sean says. “You know I have always had friends besides you, Lyla.”

“True, but I taught you everything you know about being cool so I take credit for all of them.”

“Whatever.”

“What are your birthday options?”

He takes a minute to think. “Obviously nothing that'll actually be fun. We have a few decent looking old movies. It could involve, like, kickball or running I guess. There’s a track and stuff. Also, sometimes we get cake.”

“Dude, you have to live it up to the max. You should have a kickball race to the cake with, like, I don’t know, old movies playing in the background. It will be wild.”

Sean laughs. “Sounds stupid.”

They shoot the shit for a while longer and demolish the snacks until the officer on duty announces that visiting hours end in five. Lyla instantly craves a cigarette as she thinks about the long drive back to school.

She'd always hoped her and Sean would somehow end up at the same college. She was already feeling sappy about graduation by like sophomore year of high school, which was pretty premature, probably unnecessary, and definitely emo. But Lyla has premature and unnecessary feelings about most things, so emo is kind of par for the course in her experience. 

She just hated thinking they might grow apart. So instead, she imagined some sort of movie scenario where they'd both apply to the same place as a joke, and then they'd both get in, and then they'd both realize it was the perfect school. Maybe he’d major in art, and she'd major in . . . something, and they would still do everything together, even then.

Back when Sean first got to the juvie place where they put him before he turned 18, she wrote him an angsty letter about not wanting to start college when he couldn't. She said she might skip it. She knew right when he received that letter because the first call she ever got from a prison started out with, “Lyla, you are being so fucking ridiculous.”

Sean told her to go to college because he couldn't. Said he probably wouldn't be going when he gets out of here anyway. So Lyla went.

Now, she's done with freshman year, major undeclared, 3.46 GPA earned, summer job at the dining hall secured, and not a single bust for the ounce of weed hiding out in her desk drawer. She kind of hates living in the dorms with a bunch of aspiring sorority girls, but she has to admit that college is a lot less lonely than the end of high school was.

Sometimes she still gets so fucking mad about what happened to Sean that she can't even function. It scares her. But also, is it wrong to be a little relieved that she actually knows where Sean is again, even if the place he's in sucks really hard?

Before, she'd imagined she would at least get to visit him at some faraway, fancy art school before he disowned her utterly. Maybe like NYU or something. Instead, she ended up visiting him in jail. The good news is that he still hasn't disowned her yet.

When Lyla gets up to hug Sean goodbye, she tries to make it count. She might not be able to visit again until after classes start.

“Hey, uh, could you hold up a minute?” He asks when she bends down to brush cheese dust off her pants.

“What’s up?"

“I was wondering if . . ."

His eye casts downward, and his forehead creases. He looks like a kid with that reluctant expression plastered on his face, but he also looks old as fuck in the monochrome khaki. The eye patch doesn't exactly help either. Mostly, he looks like he regrets pre-empting whatever he was about to say.

Lyla feels an expectant smile light up her face as she watches Sean realize that she won't be letting this go.

He tries to evade anyway, “Actually, never mind. It’s really—"

“Come on Sean, I’m here for you. We’re pals! You gotta stop thinking you’re an inconvenience, man.” She flips into hard-ass reassurance mode like an experienced gymnast.

"I just know this is going to be really fucking inconvenient.” He groans, running a hand over his shaved head.

This sort of thing happens at least once per visit. The first time, it was because he wanted her to give Ellery his new mailing address. The fifth time, it was because he wanted a Mountain Dew from the vending machine. Maybe this time he wants to borrow a pen.

“I will go to the moon and back for you, my friend,” She recites, bravado turned up to a million. “But, like, seriously, I don’t care. I don’t have anything but work going on for the next month. The summer life is pretty chill. Just tell me!”

Lyla assumes he probably wants to complain about asking for a while longer, but they're in a prison visiting room with negative one minutes left in their time together, and the guards are kind of starting to breathe down his neck. He hurries it up.

“Okay, would you be willing to, um, go down to Beaver Creek and visit Daniel for me this summer?”

He says it so fast that it's practically incomprehensible, but there it is. Lyla is actually pretty taken aback by that request. She'd been extra careful not to mention Daniel or anything that might even vaguely allude to him. It was kind of hard considering how little she actually knows about the time they spent running. It worked today though, and Sean also hadn’t brought him up.

Their friendship is full of hesitations now, and Daniel's definitely the biggest one.

The judge gave Daniel over to Sean’s mom’s parents nearly two years ago. Lyla had literally never heard of them before this whole thing started. Apparently their house was the place Sean called her from a couple months after he left. The cops wouldn’t let her hear the end of that one. Sean was lucky she’d started answering any random number that called her phone, just in case it was him. Even the ones that were obviously, like, telemarketers and scams and shit.

Sean talks to his brother on the phone once a week, and Daniel is allowed to come up to Washington and visit a few times a year with their grandma. They'd only let him come twice so far, and from what Lyla can tell, those visits were some of the worst experiences of Sean’s life, at least in the post-runaway nightmare era anyway.

Even after he gets out of jail, Sean won't be able to leave Washington for a few years without permission from a probation officer, and he sure as hell won't be getting custody of his brother. He got off without the fucking bullshit murder charge and the equally bullshit kidnapping one, but he's still dealing with a long list of other charges for resisting the police and, as strange as it seems to Lyla, assault and battery. As far as she can guess, he did what he had to do.

Sean keeps talking, suddenly bleeding information about Daniel. “You could go just for like a day, maybe one night. It’s only a few hours away from your school, and you said you needed to get more practice with highway driving. It’s just that—apparently he isn’t doing as well at the new school. I don’t know if he likes it there anymore. He said he does on the phone, but I’m not sure whether to believe him. I guess his friend moved away. He has to go to summer school to catch up with the other kids, and he’s been having anger issues for a while, and his therapist is trying to prescribe something, and. . ."

Lyla raises her eyebrows. Sometimes it's stone cold shocking how much Sean has changed.

"I just need someone to go look in on him for me and make sure everything’s okay and that, like, the grandparents are still treating him right. Plus, he kept telling me he missed you, um, back when we were. . . traveling. But yeah, so probably—well, it might be nice?”

Lyla doesn’t hesitate to say yes when he finally shuts up. The last time she saw Daniel was at Sean's trial from about 20 feet away, crying and exhausted-looking in a little button-up and tie. He must be almost 12 by now.

Sean hugs her goodbye again, squeezing tight. “You make me feel so normal in the best fucking way. Seriously. Thanks for doing this,” he says. He sounds choked up, which Lyla hates.

She drives back with the grandparent’s address scribbled on her hand and a bunch of new phone numbers stored in her contacts. Sean had all of them memorized.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyla ventures to Beaver Creek as a favor to her best friend. Daniel misbehaves as usual. Sean attempts to parent from afar.

August 2019

“Turn left,” Lyla’s GPS commands. She does as she's told.

The air conditioner and the stereo in her shitty old car are both blasting. Trees swallow the road ahead, enveloping the car with green, green, green. There aren’t any actual highways leading up to this place, just a string of country roads peppered with burnt out barns and the occasional tiny town made of gas stations and farm stands.

It won’t be much further until Beaver Creek, but Lyla is starting to run dangerously low on gas. She'll have to stop before town.

Sean sent her a letter with a list of things to look into about Daniel and a little info about the grandparents. She tried not to let his warning of “be prepared, things are tense with them” make her too nervous. 

Anyway, Sean told them she was coming, and they're having her over for dinner at their house tonight as a favor to him. She clenches her fists, squeezing dread and anticipation and excitement into the steering wheel.

Then her phone is ringing, and she picks it up on speaker.

“What’s up Eric?"

“Hey,” Eric says. “You home?”

“Nope. I’m only coming back to Seattle for one weekend before school starts.”

“Dude, Lyla, I am so bored! Why did you have to stay at school this summer? There’s nothing to do at home,” Eric is almost always bored.

She humors him. “That’s why I stayed at school. I like it when everybody’s gone ‘cause I basically own the place. Isn’t Ellery around or something?”

“Yeah, but he’s boring! The guy reads too much sci fi crap.”

“Maybe you should try reading,” she says.

“Oh, haha. Whatever, just please fuckin' hit me up when you’re back. My parents are out of town like every weekend for the rest of the summer. You could come over.”

“Yeah, that might be cool,” she tells him breezily.

Lyla's pretty ready to hang up. She kind of already lost touch with Eric, even if they’ve barely been out of high school a year. He went to a different college out-of-state, and it’s not like they have much to say to each other anymore. Things kind of went to shit with their friend group after the whole Sean debacle in junior year. 

These days, Eric mostly just calls to see if she's down to fuck. That got old pretty quick, even if she did actually meet up with him once a while ago.

“So, uh, have you been to visit Sean lately?” Eric asks.

The weird transition to Sean is right on cue. 

It's like calling Lyla has two functions for Eric: initiating boring sex and seeking information about a dude he hasn’t talked to in almost three years. Sometimes Lyla and Ellery laugh about it.

“Yeah, I was there a couple weeks ago.”

“Cool. How’s he doing these days?”

“Seems better than he was. He’s just kind of dealing with it. Worried about his brother and stuff.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“You know, you could ask him yourself. You’ve got his mailing address.” Sometimes Lyla can't resist being savage when it comes to Sean, even if it kind of makes her feel like a jerk afterward.

Eric sighs. “Fine, I get it.” Lyla knows that he actually doesn't. "Just let me know when you’re in town, okay?”

“Maybe.” Lyla knows she probably won't. 

“Alright, bye.”

Lyla hangs up, shaking her head, and redirects her GPS to find the nearest gas station.

She goes inside to pay for the fuel and picks up a bunch of snacks. She snags the kind of barbecue chips and soda Sean likes, because if Sean likes them Daniel probably likes them, right? Sean also told her that Daniel loves those gross Chock-o-Crisp bars, so she picks up three. Maybe she can use them as bribes or something.

As the car fills, she scrolls through her texts. There's one from her boss telling her to have a good trip and one from Amanda worrying that she killed Lyla’s house plants. But the one that really gets her attention is from Daniel’s cell, which is apparently a relatively new thing.

“Hi Lila! Instead of coming to the house can u meet me at the Jody's diner on mantle st?”

Lyla figures that could probably be okay. She wouldn’t mind talking to Daniel for a few minutes without the old people around. She types the place into her GPS, and it's only like a block from the grandparents house.

“Hi Daniel! Excited 2 see u. Yeah that sounds good. Should b there in 20,” she replies. Then, another thought crosses her mind. She feels the need to follow up.

“ur grandma knows about this rite?”

Daniel responds right away. “Cool! Yeah totally.” With three smiling emojis to seal the deal.

When Lyla parks at the diner, it’s pretty empty. She’s early. It looks like a cute little place. Not too busy in the post-lunch, pre-dinner lull.

She gets out and debates whether or not to smoke. On one hand, this is a pretty small town, and she doesn't want anyone, especially not Daniel or the grandparents, thinking she’s a loser. On the other, she really wants to.

She gives in and lights up.

Lyla wipes a sweaty palm on the front of her shorts, just resting there for a minute. The front of her car feels scorching where she leans on it, and she watches heat wave up from the tarmac of the parking lot. Lyla inhales, letting the smoke bake her on the inside while the sun bakes her on the outside.

For a while, Daniel mostly existed to her in Reddit conspiracy threads and news reports. Now he's become the subject of vague, business-like updates that Sean sometimes offers up.

“Daniel started at the new school this month.”

“Daniel got a cell phone.”

“Daniel visited last week. It was . . . rough."

The Daniel that Lyla knew is a vague sketch of a kid who used to love super heroes and zombies, used to annoy his brother every chance he got, used to idolize her as his first crush. She wonders how much of that stuff is still true, even if she really hopes he’s over the last one.

Lyla imagines herself back in the car leaving this place. Only one night. She knows from experience that she probably won't be sleeping until she's back in her bed at school and maybe not even then.

Someone's coming toward her on the otherwise empty sidewalk. A someone who is unmistakably young, unmistakably (and painfully) Sean-like. She stomps the cigarette out in anticipation. 

Daniel looks kind of different with a new haircut and slightly taller stature, but he's definitely recognizable as the kid she knew. Lyla waves to him, smiling widely. He waves back and quickens his pace and the whole thing starts to feel surreal. Then, he's nearly standing in front of her.

“Lyla, hey,” he calls when he’s close enough. His voice is almost comically different from what she remembers. It’s deeper and scratchy and wild. Sounds like it might be starting to change. Damn, he's old. Despite that, warmth and familiarity rush over her. Coming here instantly feels like it was the right decision.

“Daniel!” She realizes she’s not sure whether to hug the kid. She decides to start with a high five, which he returns, a small smile on his lips.

“Dude, it’s so great to see you again,” Lyla gushes at him.

“You too. It’s cool you came all this way,” he says in a flat, muted tone that sort of surprises her. He pauses but follows up. “Uh, can I hug you?”

Lyla pulls him in. Despite the voice thing, he's nearly as short as the younger Daniel still living in her mind’s eye. “Yeah, of course. I thought you were never gonna ask!”

She feels laughter bubbling up inside her as she holds onto him. A piece of her is newly mangled. So many small, stupid things keep accumulating to remind her how fucked up all their lives have become. Admittedly, this is kind of a big stupid thing. She lets out a bit of the laugh and hopes it won't sound too insane. He laughs with her for a weird and giddy moment.

Just as they're separating, Lyla’s phone starts to ring. The long, foreboding number for the prison line scrolls across her screen. It feels like almost eerily perfect timing. It’s also an unfortunate reminder that Lyla isn’t here for a fun, personal visit. She’s here to check up on a kid whose brother is stuck in jail.

“Oh hey, I think it might be Sean. Let me see what he wants,” she says, smiling a bit more wanly at Daniel.

His expression kind of blanks out too while he watches her listen to the prison recording and press 1 to accept Sean's call.

“Hello?”

“Hey Lyla, did you make it?” Sean sounds anxious and tinny on the other end.

“Yeah! Just got out of the car pretty much. I’m actually here with Daniel right now.”

“Oh, cool. Tell him I say hi.”

“He says hi,” she tells Daniel, who only sticks his tongue out in response.

“Yeah, Daniel says hi back."

“Thanks again for doing this, seriously. You really didn’t have to, but I’m, like, really glad you did.”

“It’s no problem, dude. That’s what I’m here for,” Lyla reassures for what feels like the millionth time.

“So are the grandparents around?”

“Oh, no not yet. I met Daniel at this diner down the street, and—"

She looks up to see Daniel rapidly shaking his head at her, eyes wide.

“What?” Sean jumps on that information right away. "He’s not allowed to do stuff like that yet. Did he text you?”

Lyla’s heart drops. She pulls a face at Daniel, who has transitioned from warning to resignation. The kid's about to be in trouble, clearly.

“Yeah, he texted me. He said your grandma told him it was okay." 

“I don’t fucking buy that. Sometimes I seriously regret making them get the little shit a phone." 

"I’m sorry, Sean. I should have called Claire to check or something.”

“No, this is definitely not your fault. Don’t worry about it,” Sean consoles. "Can I talk to him?”

Lyla puts the phone on speaker and gives Daniel a pointed look.

“Hi Sean,” he says long-sufferingly.

“Daniel, dude, why did you lie to Lyla? I know you didn’t ask Claire if you could leave.”

Daniel gives Lyla a weird sort of look then, kind of like he’s sizing her up. “I seriously hate it when you know things sometimes,” he says.

“Well that’s the way it is. When we hang up, you better call Claire and tell her where you are."

“Yeah, fine I will.”

"I just don’t like to see you making this harder on yourself, _enano_.”

“I know.”

Sean sighs audibly. Lyla can practically hear his forehead crinkling in the most parental of manners.

“Listen, I really hope you’ll talk to Lyla this weekend. It bums me out that things aren’t going so great over there. She cares about you, and she wants to help.”

Lyla chooses that moment to chime in. “Yeah, totally. I’m still your friend!”

“Wait. Lyla, did you put me on speaker?” Sean asks, distracted.

“Yup. Is that not okay?”

There's a moment of awkwardness while Sean most likely debates the best way to let her down easy.

“Actually, can I talk to Daniel on his own for a minute?”

“Oh, totally. Sorry.” Lyla switches the speaker off and hands her cell over to Daniel. She tries to tamp down the sudden overwhelming feeling that she's already fucked this whole visit up. 

Daniel walks a respectful distance away from Lyla, like he’s hoping to be out of earshot. She fidgets with her bag to give him some privacy. Even trying not to listen in, she can't help but overhear some whining and cryptic shit on his end of the call.

“I know. . . Yeah, I know. . . Okay, whatever. . . Then am I supposed to tell her about my— What? . . . Why? . . . It seemed like she knew about you though. . . Oh. Fine, I guess I’ll try. . . Alright. I’ll talk to you soon. . . Yeah, I know, I already said I’ll call Claire! God, Sean. . . Okay, bye.”

Lyla tries not to read too much into whatever secrets they're apparently hiding. She doesn't blame Sean for keeping some things from her. There's just some stuff she's better off not knowing. As much as she wanted to spend her college years hanging with Sean, she has no desire to end up in prison too.

Daniel comes back and gives her the phone, the call already ended.

“He said to tell you bye," he says sullenly.

Lyla laughs. “Dude is always so polite. Bye Sean,” she calls out into the void. Daniel gives her a pity smile. “You gonna call your grandma then?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Daniel calls Claire on his own cell and gets scolded by yet another parental figure. It seems like this sort of thing is not an uncommon occurrence. Claire makes him hand the phone over to Lyla to confirm that she's actually with him and not just a figment of his "overactive imagination." Apparently that’s her way of sugarcoating that he probably lies to her pretty frequently. She tells Daniel to be back at the house in an hour. 

They kind of just stare at each other when he hangs up. Daniel looks apprehensive. Seems like he's preparing for Lyla to turn around and leave.

Instead, she turns toward the diner.

“You coming?” She calls over her shoulder.

They get a quiet booth in the back corner. Very quiet. Daniel's probably mad that Lyla immediately got him busted, and she has to admit that the bullshit he tried to pull was straight up dumb. If he didn’t want to get caught sneaking around, he should have at least warned her. They could have negotiated or something.

Both of them avoid talking about their growing resentments in lieu of poring over the menus as if they're lost tomes. 

Lyla always orders a breakfast special at places like this, no matter the time of day, but she figures it couldn't hurt to look at the menu extra closely. Just for a minute or two. There might be some important surprises she'll need to attend to, like cinnamon toast or turkey bacon.

Then the waitress comes to take their order, and Lyla is left defenseless and distractionless. She’d thought about how this first conversation was going to play out tons of times, prepping small talk topics. Now that she's actually here, she just can't decide what to say.

It ends up being Daniel who breaks the standoff first. Sean always used complain about how good Daniel was with people, charming them to get whatever bullshit toy or privilege he wanted. Lyla would always remind him that to normal people, that sort of social thing is actually an asset and not something to whine about. She appreciates Daniel in this moment of dire social need.

“You know, you look really different. It’s sorta weird.”

And then he had to go and be a douche. 

It's nothing Lyla hasn’t heard before. People tend to either love her new look or hate it. Most of them feel the need to express an opinion either way.

“Oh, do you mean my hair?” Lyla plays dumb, touching the shaved sides of her undercut. It's longer and swoopy on the top. "Yeah, I cut it all off last year.”

She got her hair cut this way for the first time right before Sean's trial, but she assumes Daniel probably wouldn’t remember that.

“Why?”

There are a lot of answers to that question, and all of them are complicated. She was experiencing what she thought would be the worst time of her life, and her mom just wanted her to pretend everything was normal. She was graduating from high school. She lost her virginity, and it felt wrong somehow. She didn’t think the longer hair suited her so well anymore. 

Lyla hadn’t expected to keep it short for so long, but now everyone at school knows her like that. Plus, she actually loves it.

“I guess it makes me feel more like myself. You really don’t like it?”

Daniel is quick to correct. “No, I think it’s super cool. Sean got a haircut that looked kind of like that once, but it was dumb,” he says. That's news to Lyla. "You look like a rockstar or something. It’s just different from how I remembered you."

“Good. Because if you said it was ugly I was gonna hide all the stuff I brought you,” Lyla jokes, feeling pleased with him again.

“You wouldn’t dare.” Daniel smiles at her in a way that feels immediately familiar.

“You look different too, you know. Would it be weird to tell you that it’s kind of creeping me out how much you look like Sean these days?”

Daniel actually looks surprised to hear that. “What? Um, yeah it would. No one's ever told me that before.”

“Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen you in a while, but you’re even wearing your hair like he used to, dude.” Daniel’s hair is cropped shorter than she’s ever seen it with tiny little bangs on his forehead. 

“Oh god, am I? I seriously didn’t realize.” His hands fly up to mess around with his hair, as if fluffing it up in a new direction will make her change her mind.

“It looks good! I met Sean when we were pretty close to your age, and it’s kind of funny how similar you look to the way he was back then.” 

Of course, they weren’t really friends when they were Daniel’s age. That was during Lyla's “goth” phase, and Sean was always decidedly a skater jock. But she definitely remembers helping him in math. 

Hanging out with a nearly 12-year-old Daniel feels like hanging out with middle school Sean all over again. Except for the part where their personalities are totally different. Daniel has always been loud and expressive. Sean's pretty quiet in public, and that was especially true back when he was a kid. He was afraid of anyone who was older than him. Sean only started coming out of his shell once they got settled into high school. That was probably why it took so long for Lyla to notice he was actually a really chill person.

“I guess that’s, like, a compliment coming from you. So, thanks,” Daniel tells her.

“You are welcome, my friend,” Lyla says. “Can I ask you something?”

“I mean, I know Sean pretty much made you come here to ask me a bunch of things, so you can get started whenever.”

Lyla frowns. That felt uncharacteristically fierce.

“Dude,” she says to make her disapproval known.

“It was a joke.” Daniel looks down at the table with a gritty stare that suggests it was probably only about twenty percent joke and eighty percent something else entirely.

Lyla watches him. She decides to lay her cards out.

“If we’re hanging out this weekend, I need you to know something,” she says after a moment. "Sean did ask me to come check in on you since he can’t, but that doesn’t mean I’m just gonna interrogate you. I wanted to come here because I care about you. Also, this isn't a question Sean told me to ask.”

Daniel still doesn’t meet her eyes, but he does kind of look up a bit.

“Fine. What’s your question?"

“Why did you want to come here instead of meeting up at your grandparents' place like we planned?”

Daniel crosses his arms and looks downward again in a gesture that makes him even more reminiscent of an annoyed Sean.

“Um, I really wanted you to buy me pancakes?”

Lyla smirks at him. “Then why did you only get fries?”

“I don’t know,” Daniel groans.

Lyla takes this as a cue to wait for more information.

“Like, honestly, I guess I kind of just wanted to hang out with you without them around first,” Daniel says after a short eternity, finally looking at her. “A lot of the kids here aren’t allowed to play with me, and I’m not supposed to go out alone, so it gets really boring at the house and stuff. I felt like it was worth the risk."

“Oh,” Lyla says, like the supportive and articulate elder figure that she is.

"Also, I did actually want pancakes. At the time. A dude is allowed to change his mind!”

Daniel's still way younger than Lyla, but he's definitely much more adult than she remembered. Before, it was kind of hard to take anything he said too seriously. He was a cutie, but he was also somebody's annoying little brother. Now, he's actually, like, his own person. This feels jarring to Lyla for a lot of reasons she can’t quite pin down. She knows this sort of thing is a natural part of growing up, but Daniel's growing up also got totally fucking derailed.

His personality is different somehow though. Calmer, quieter, sadder, more restless. Maybe it's the onset of preteen angst and all that, but Lyla can assume that's probably just a fraction of what's actually going on with him.

“Yeah, I get that. Just remember that we want your grandparents to like me, okay?”

“I know."

The waitress comes then to bring the all-day breakfast special for Lyla and fries for Daniel. He immediately starts shoveling them into his mouth like they’re at a world championship speed-eating competition and not a tiny diner in the middle of nowhere.

Between bites, he asks, “So, can you tell me what college is like? Is it true that you get to eat at a buffet every day? Did you ever do a keg stand?”

Lyla laughs and fills him in.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daniel gives Lyla a tour. Lyla gives Daniel a gift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who has supported this fic! I love corny titles because I can say things like: Your support is Chock-O-Crisp for my teenage soul. I mean it though. I know this sad (but eventually hopeful) little story isn't necessarily what the fandom wants at the moment, but I'm glad you're here.

“I’m back!” Daniel calls. It feels weird to watch him open the door to this place with a house key like he actually lives here. It gets weirder when Lyla remembers he does actually live here.

“Hi Daniel,” someone calls back from within.

Daniel kicks his shoes off and runs through what looks like the dining room. Lyla bends down to untie her boots.

“Lyla’s here with me,” she hears him say.

“Did you just leave her at the door? Let’s be polite and go show her around.”

Just as Lyla pulls off her second boot, Daniel comes back with a bald white guy in suspenders who must be Sean’s grandpa. All she can remember about him from Sean's letter is that he's ultra conservative but also not too showy about it. Kind of a nice guy, apparently. She can probably work with that.

“Hi there, you must be Lyla,” he says.

“Yes sir. Thanks for having me over. I’m sorry for letting Daniel go somewhere he wasn’t supposed to earlier.”

“The name’s Stephen,” he shakes her hand. “And we both know that wasn’t your fault, so don’t sweat it.” He gives Daniel a look.

“Sorry, Lyla,” Daniel says obediently.

Stephen gives him a nod of approval. “My wife is out at the store grabbing a few more things for dinner tonight, but I know Daniel would love to give you the grand tour.” 

Even after scolding Daniel, the guy brightens right back up. He winks at his grandson, who tries to wink back and fails utterly. He looks a bit like a twitchy fish.

“I suck at winking,” Daniel explains.

“You’ll get it, kid,” Stephen tells him. “I’ll be in my workshop finishing some things up. Please just stick around the house so you don’t give your grandmother a heart attack. We’ll let you know when we’re ready for dinner.”

With that, Daniel drags Lyla around the house to point out a bunch of seemingly random shit. He shows her his fish in the living room tank, his art from school on the fridge, and his nearly finished puzzle in the dining room. 

She tries to imagine Sean sitting in one of these rooms when they were on the run a few winters back, deciding whether he should take the risk of calling her. It was an incredibly fucking stupid move at the time, but Lyla's still glad he did. He must have been going crazy here.

Daniel takes her out to the backyard and tells her that his best friend used to live next-door. His dad decided to move a couple months ago so he could coach basketball at a high school a couple hours away.

“When Chris moved, he gave me his treehouse. Stephen rebuilt it in our tree,” he says solemnly.

Daniel makes Lyla climb all the way to the top, even though she's a little worried the wooden floor might collapse under her. Daniel doesn't seem all that concerned. There are a couple of action figures in there, and the view is kind of cool.

“I didn’t have a lot of toys or anything when I first moved here, but some of this stuff is Chris’s,” Daniel says when they’re both perched at the top. "He said he wanted to have something to do when he comes to visit. We’re both kind of getting too old for it now though, I guess.” 

Then, Daniel remembers that there's something awesome he has to show her upstairs.

It's apparently Stephen’s big model train set, which looks so boring that Lyla can hardly fathom it. She feigns what she hopes is some pretty convincing excitement about it though and watches him mess around with the thing for a while.

“Oh hey, you wanna see my room?” Daniel asks like it’s an afterthought.

“Yeah, of course I do!” This is the first time Daniel has asked her if she actually _wants_ to see anything since they’ve been here, so she tries to show a little extra enthusiasm.

He leads her into a bedroom with blue striped walls and a bunch of old-looking furniture. It smells like socks masked with Febreeze. There's a desk covered with what looks like summer school homework, a bed, and a plaid chair in the corner. A TV and newer model PlayBox are crowded on top of a dresser with some pillows on the floor in front of it. Lyla can see a pile of clothes peeking out from under the bed.

“Claire made me clean in here since you're visiting. I think I did pretty good.”

“Not so bad. Cool they let you get a PlayBox,” Lyla offers.

Daniel sounds a little forlorn when he says, “Yeah, it really was.”

Lyla plops down on the chair and kicks her feet up over the arm. “Comfortable too."

“Yeah. Actually, this used to be my mom’s room when she was a kid,” Daniel says, without really looking at her. He picks up a teddy bear from the floor and puts it on the bed.

Instantly, Lyla knows they’ve entered shaky territory.

“Really?"

"They had me in the guest room across the hall when I got here. That’s where me and Sean stayed too. I was pretty sad when I moved in for good though, even with Chris and mom around, so mom said she wanted me to take this room. Claire was mad and stuff, but I like it better in here.”

Aside from the Playbox and clothes and summer school homework, there doesn't really seem to be much of Daniel in this room at all, especially compared to the rest of the house. He's such a creative kid, but Lyla doesn't see any of his usual suspects, like his action figures on the floor or his drawings hanging on the walls.

"Does your mom ever visit you here?”

Daniel sits down on the bed cross-legged. Sean hadn’t mentioned their mom in his most recent letter. He doesn’t even call her mom.

"Um, she was here for a while at first. I guess I hoped she might just stay or whatever. She never pretended she was going to though, so it wasn’t, like, super surprising when she left. I think her and my grandma hate each other, basically,” Daniel explains, staring down at the teddy bear. 

“Oh."

"She did some really nice stuff for us, especially right after we got caught. I mean, you remember.”

Yeah, Lyla does remember the “stuff." Apparently, she took them in for a couple months while they were on the run. That and some other things she did to help them (arson, for some reason?) got her arrested right alongside her sons. She had a few lawyer friends from New York City who got her out of jail time and helped them out during Sean's trial. She even got the judge to agree to bail with house arrest for him while the state assembled a jury. It was seemed like a stupid decision on their part considering that Sean’s charges involved a whole lot of running from, resisting, and impeding law enforcement. 

Regardless, Karen paid the bail, which cost a small fortune, and rented a place in Seattle for Sean and Daniel to live with her until the trial. That was where Lyla visited Sean for the first time since it all went down. It was basically the weirdest time of the whole ordeal. 

At one point, Sean told Lyla he wished he’d stayed in jail. She smacked him, obviously. But she could also see that living with his mom again after everything that happened was hard for him in ways she didn't totally understand. 

Daniel continues. "Sean was kind of right about mom. I’m not mad at her like he is, but she’s definitely not like how our dad used to be. I mean I guess I was really mad when she left this time, but I got over it. It's just when we were staying with her in Arizona and stuff, I thought things would be different. Sean isn’t ever gonna get over it, I don’t think.”

He fidgets with some stray threads on the teddy bear’s leg. Lyla takes a steadying breath.

“I think it’s really hard for him, Dan. I bet if you’re patient with him, he might change,” she says, measuring her words carefully. Lyla makes a mental note for her debrief with Sean.

“Maybe. He’s always been like that though. But yeah, mom took me shopping for a bunch of stuff back when we were stuck in Seattle, so that’s where pretty much all my clothes came from and the Playbox too.”

“Yeah, nice.” Lyla nods at him.

“And I have her phone number now, so that’s good.”

Daniel flashes her a smile that probably isn't meant to be sad but looks pretty sad anyway.

Lyla just watches him for a minute. Daniel’s mom outright refused custody of him. His brother's in jail in another state for trying to protect him. His dad was fucking murdered.

The first time Lyla visited Sean at the weird house arrest apartment, he told her that this was the worst-case scenario—the losing outcome. He said he'd completely failed. Apparently they were trying to get to Mexico, and they made it all the way to the border by the time they got caught. But in the end they got hauled right back to where they started. 

Back then Sean didn’t know he’d be getting off with a lot less jail time than his lawyer expected. But even with that, things did turn out pretty badly, all in all. 

They could definitely have been worse though. There were a lot of times when people online were sure the Diaz brothers were only still managing to hide from the police because they were buried in a shallow grave somewhere. Lyla never believed it. 

Not really, anyway.

These days, when Lyla thinks about Daniel, it's usually because she's thinking about Sean. How will Sean take Daniel moving to Oregon? What will Sean do to keep Daniel safe? How will Sean be affected by Daniel’s prison visits? In all her worrying over Sean, Daniel has become like an abstract piece of emotional baggage instead of a person. But he's real now, and his realness hits her hard. Lyla feels herself actually feeling for Daniel for the first time in a long time. Possibly ever.

Daniel fidgets under her gaze and then turns away completely. 

“Could you not look at me like that?” He asks, voice tight. “I’m sick of being, like, pitied by people. I’m doing fine here.”

Caught in the act. Lyla doesn't know if she feels pity or what that even means in a situation like this, but she doesn't blame him for being creeped out.

“Sorry man,” Lyla says gravely. “I know you are. I’m just glad to see you. I remember when you were a little kid. I guess it’s just weird to think about how much you’ve grown up and everything.”

That “and everything" can barely cover all the stuff she’s struggling to think about.

“Yeah, okay.” Daniel keeps picking at the teddy bear, pulling out some of its leg-stuffing and setting the errant pieces in a pile on the bed.

“Oh,” Lyla says after a moment, trying to sound chipper again. “I forgot I totally have something for you. Me and Sean got you a present. By that I mean, Sean told me what to get, and I bought it.”

Lyla gets up and walks over to her stuff in the corner to grab the present in its little paper bag.

She hands it over, and he perks back up. “Don’t open it yet, okay. Let me get a couple pictures of you!”

Lyla snaps some pictures of Daniel posing with the bag and making faces. Then, she switches over to video when he moves to open it.

It's one of those little chibli Power Bear toys that make a super annoying sound when you push a button. Daniel’s expression extinguishes the second he sees it.

He looks over at Lyla. “Yeah, this is great. Thanks,” he says in some of the most unconvincing tones imaginable.

Lyla stops videotaping right away. She’ll have to do some serious editing if she's gonna show this to Sean. His gift idea clearly did not have the desired effect.

“You don’t like it?”

“I mean, I just don’t know if I’m really into Power Bear anymore. That’s kind of a kid thing.”

“Damn, I’m sorry. I guess we’re just too old to know what’s cool anymore dude.” Lyla's honestly pretty disappointed. Is it really that weird for sixth graders to like toys? Doesn't he still play with the superhero action figures in the treehouse?

“Sean actually won me one of these back, like, one of the first days we were on our own. Before I even really knew what was going on. It was at this gas station claw machine thing. The cops took my bag though, and I never got it back. Did you win this in a claw machine, Lyla?”

She snorts. “No, I bought it at Target. I have literally never won at those things.”

“Oh,” he says.

“I have something else for you, but this is just from me. Don’t tell your grandma that I’m spoiling your dinner though.”

Lyla pulls out one of her secret weapon Chock-o-Crisps.

“Yes!” Daniel says. “I’ll never get tired of these.” He tears into it right away.

“Are you gonna keep that Power Bear thing?” She asks him. “I think it would make Sean happy to know you have it."

“Yeah, I’ll keep it,” he says. 

She tries to smile encouragingly.

“Hey Lyla? I know you’re, like, Sean’s best friend and whatever, but it’s cool that you’re trying to be my friend too.”

That makes Lyla kind of want to cry.

Right then, Claire calls them downstairs for dinner.


End file.
